Here's the plan. Get a cheap squier strat, turn it into a 50's style relic. So far i've got the guitar and I'm in the process of turning the ugly ass 70's headstock into a pre-cbs era headstock.

After a nice little setup it plays great!

What an ugly 'stock

No worries! It now looks like this

And soon it shall get a logo like this:

Also, I tested out aging hardware. This used to be a chrome SX strat jack plate. I got a little fed up with letting it sit in a fume of acid and having nothing happen. So I let it sit in it's little happy place of caustic fumes over night.... now if I was going for the titanic rescue strat, this would be perfect...

For the real deal I'll only give it a few hours haha and watch it more carefully.

Haha I've been thinking of doing a steampunky guitar. I was thinking like 1/2" ply with a neck bolted right on top and a frame of copper pipe to mount the electronics, bridge, and pickups on. Alllso, I just started working on the decal today. Hopefully that goes well...

You've gotta make 'em. I went to my local hobby shop today and bought some inkjet decal paper and did the decal!

Here's what it looks like with some clear.

The decal is a bit foggy, I was having trouble getting it to stick so I had to glue it on with some white glue. Ended up getting a bit foggy behind the decal. I probably didn't let it sit for long enough before shooting clear.

I also swapped out the saddles for some vintage style ones off my yamaha.

I aged some of the plastic bits as well, and added these cool little pointers

I aged some of the screws as well. Don't have a picture of that though.

Well I started in on stripping the body today. People give poly all the hate, but really it's the sanding sealer that's the bitch. The polyurethane top coat is thin, the sanding sealer appears to be expoxy and it's super crazy thick. I measured and it's .050 thick. Low e's are smaller than that! I think a lot of people get fooled using chemical strippers because they think it's cleaned everything off when really it's just stopped at the epoxy sealer.

Well I started in on stripping the body today. People give poly all the hate, but really it's the sanding sealer that's the bitch. The polyurethane top coat is thin, the sanding sealer appears to be expoxy and it's super crazy thick. I measured and it's .050 thick. Low e's are smaller than that! I think a lot of people get fooled using chemical strippers because they think it's cleaned everything off when really it's just stopped at the epoxy sealer.

Well not a lot of interest I suppose. But anyhow I did a cover of Gravity by John Mayer and here's the video. The rhythm sound is the neck-mid position while the lead is I think all neck pickup. Also feel free to subscribe on youtube! And I have a facebook page for my projects now: http://www.facebook.com/LeviBetzsProjects